Handprint Turkeys

When E wanted to “do something” {her way of saying “Let’s do an activity!”} early one morning a few days before Thanksgiving, I asked her if she wanted to make handprint turkeys, and she happily agreed. This was the perfect before breakfast activity, simple, quick to set up, and just a classic Thanksgiving craft. And most importantly, E had lots of fun with it!

The handprints make a great decoration and a wonderful keepsake. We’ll be sure to compare the prints to her hand size next Thanksgiving!

To make handprint turkeys, you’ll need:

We put the colors we chose into small applesauce cups to make it easier to apply them to E’s hand.

We only have tempera paint in primary colors and usually mix whatever secondary colors we need. As this was before breakfast, I wasn’t in the mood for color mixing and went with liquid watercolors for the secondary colors E wanted. You can absolutely just use one type of paint, whatever you have on hand. If you have both, tempera paint tends to work better for handprints, as it’s more intense and doesn’t dry as quickly. Still, I’m quite happy with how the combination of both types did for us.

I started out painting the palm of her hand and her thumb brown with liquid watercolors

then painted her fingers red and yellow with tempera paint. {I had to re-do the brown paint because liquid watercolors dry quite quickly.}

E thought this was all completely hilarious and giggled the whole time.

We made more turkeys with violet and green and with violet and blue feathers at E’s request.

When E went to wash her hands afterwards, the brown and green liquid watercolors and the tempera paint came of as easily as expected but the violet watercolors surprised me by staining E’s fingers and not coming off, even when I scrubbed a bit. I just left it alone after that, and the color disappeared over the course of the day. It’s the first color of liquid watercolors that has ever behaved this way for us…

After the handprint turkeys had dried, I gave E some googly eyes to glue on the turkeys’ heads.

She first tried to use the glue straight from the bottle

but first, it was hard to squeeze, and when some glue finally appeared, it was way too much.

So I changed the plan and had her squeeze some glue into another applesauce cup and gave her a paintbrush, so she could simply brush on the glue.

This worked very well. She did have to fiddle a bit with one of the eyes because it kept flipping over for her but she managed to solve the problem after a few tries.

I’d suggested she put the eyes at the tip of the turkey’s “head”, and she actually went along with it – she’s usually more of a free spirit that way 😉

This is my favorite sheet of handprint turkeys, hands down! I’m totally in love with how, after she saw me do it on another sheet, she drew in the legs, then “signed her name” at the bottom before asking me to do the beak and wattle.

Have you made handprint turkeys? How did your kids like it? Did you do any variations? Tell me in the comments!

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